Mouthguards are dental appliances worn in the mouth of athletes to help protect their teeth against sports injuries. Some mouthguards include a mouthpiece and tether that connects the mouthpiece to a helmet while other mouthguards are untethered having only a mouthpiece free from any tether. The tether of the tethered mouthguards may assume a wide variety of strap sizes and styles.
The material of the mouthpiece is typically comprised of a plastic, or elastomer or some other substance that acts as a substrate supporting the growth of microorganisms. The growth of such microorganisms may cause hygienic and medical problems. While washing may alleviate or prevent these problems, athletes, whether young or old, routinely tend to wash their mouthguards less often than is desirable or necessary whether due to inconvenience, neglect or some other factor with microorganism buildup as the undesirable result.
UV radiant energy, a known antimicrobial sanitizer, has been employed in various devices to sanitize mouthguards and other objects such as toothbrushes that are subject to undesirable germ buildup as disclosed, for example, in US patent application publication US 2006/0242788 to Day, published Nov. 2, 2006; U.S. Pat. No. 6,461,568 to Eckhardt, issued Oct. 8, 2002; and Japanese Patent Document 9-225012, dated Sep. 2, 1997, to Kyoji. The heretofore known portable sanitizers employing antimicrobial UV radiant energy, however, have been disadvantageous in that they have not been able to sanitize both tethered and untethered mouthguards; have been subject to unintentional or unsafe UV actuation; and/or, among other things, have not been sufficiently robust to withstand the repeated use and the kind of heavy wear to which they typically are subjected from being carried about in athletic bags, thrown around in locker rooms or from other harsh or punishing treatment.